Success through Failure: My Journal

Day 5
I'm writing this on the fifth day of a streak of abstinence that I expect will be a permanent change.

Many times I have unsuccessfully tried to break my twin habits of unhealthy drinking and porn.  I have thought these failures meant starting completely over, and in many cases that may have been true, but since the beginning of this year, even though I have relapsed, I see now I was making progress and was preparing myself for what I believe is now a lifelong state of mastery over habits that once had control of me.

What made the difference was, at the beginning of this year, I started the practice of mindfulness meditation (I want to emphasize the this is a secular practice, based on science, and is compatible with any religion, though I happen to consider myself a skeptical Buddhist).  Using the app "10% Happier," I've learned to be aware of my mental and physical states and, very slowly but steadily, to develop the capacity to not be mastered by them.  Particularly, I'm now armed with the "RAIN" method of "Surfing" a wave of urges to indulge in a habit. Through the insights I've gained through mindfulness meditation, I've discovered that my habits were driven by my reaction to stressful situations at work.  Now I'm focused on controlling the both the conditions that cause stress and my reactions to conditions that produce stress ? my reactions basically consists of negative chatter inside my head.  What meditation has done is make me aware of that chatter, helping me to get distance from it.  I have found that in the late afternoon my mind feels fragmented, the voices in my head shouting all the things I need to do and won't have time to do, and my physical energy is drained.  In the past, by the end of the day I felt I needed a drink or sexual release or something to completely me distract me from the suffering.  Escape!  And in the morning, sometimes hungover, I felt a sense of dread for the day ahead, so I'd usually sneak a look at porn just to have a release from that dread.  Meditation helped me to gradually learn to not listen to the negative chatter that was at the root of this cycle of unhealthy indulgence in interconnected bad habits.

I've had many failures, but underneath it all I was building the capability to finally master myself.  This new resolve was spurred by one last failure.  Five nights ago I had drunk too much and my wife came home to discover me inebriated.  I woke up the next day, not even remembering all that I had done the night before (fortunately, no bad behavior aside from being drunk), but feeling a sense of disgust, and I said to myself "Enough!"  Very emphatically.  It happened to be the 17th anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks, and from my living room window I can actually see the site of the World Trade Center.  I thought of all the people who had died, who would never live another day, and yet here I had wasted yet again another day of my precious life indulging in habits that blurred my awareness and harmed my health and my marriage.  Thinking this, I immediately took out piece of paper, wrote a promise to myself to quit drinking and porn forever, and sealed it in an envelope and wrote "to be opened September 11, 2019" ? which will be my one year anniversary of being habit free.  Importantly, I told my wife what I had just done, and why.  She is very supportive and proud of me for having this realization and commitment. The envelope is kept in our altar, where we chant every day, and each evening after my meditation I mark on the envelope each successful day of abstinence.  When I get to the one year anniversary I plan to burn the envelope in a ceremony marking the destruction of the power that these habits had over me, recognizing that urges may still arise but my power is in being able to recognize them and just watch them as they fade (this is what is called "surfing" the wave of urges).

I'll write here to try to help others with my insights, and to seek insights from others, as I progress throughout this year's journey.

Welcome!  You certainly sound as if you are on the right track.  Mindfulness has made a big difference in my life.  It is terrifying to stop fighting these urges, let go, and allow yourself to feel them, but it works.  I listened to a dharma talk recently in which we were instructed "to face the pain without flinching."  Once you can just sit with the pain and feel it, you can begin to address it.  More often than not though, it evaporates on its own.

Congrats on your resolution.  We are here to support you.  Keep posting it.  You can do this.

Day 8

First, thanks uc light for your encouragement.  The very succinctly describe my approach to succeeding at this. 

Seven successful days behind me. I have now completed one week of abstinence from intoxicants.  I noticed very strong urges for porn when suddenly and unexpectedly presented with a trigger, a online photograph of a scantily clad woman on a workout site (not in any way a porn site!).  I just rode out the urge until it went away, and didn't linger on the site.  I also noticed surprisingly strong urges to have a drink after a stressful day of work, which is nearly every day.  I simply watched the urge rise and fall and fade away.

The reason I write about porn and alcohol together is that I have discovered that the urges both come from the same place: the desire to escape suffering (in my case, from work related stress) by substituting it with pleasure.  The sad part is that motivation ruins whatever real pleasure could be had by either alcohol or sex.  For my part, I've decided I can't drink alcohol at all: I've developed a late life intolerance to it, which causes me to get drunk easily, plus it exacerbates my acid-reflux, which is a potential dangerous disease.  Sex, though, should be something I enjoy with my spouse, and porn desensitizes me to that experience and diverts all my sexual energy and desire to an unhelpful activity.  So, my "reboot," as for many others here, isn't just about quitting porn but re-starting healthy sexual relations.  All in good time, though.  This is just Day 8.

Yeah, that city will gobble you up and spit you out.  I don't drink often, but when I do, I am the guy who is always advocating to stay out until 2 or 4 am.  I binge pretty hard, and that can trigger masturbation and porn.

I do think that porn warps your sexuality in some way, but I still haven't been able to understand what parts of my sexuality are innate and which are derivative.

Anyway, it sounds like you are riding a streak without too much difficulty.  That is great.  One day at at a time...

Inner_Light said:

The reason I write about porn and alcohol together is that I have discovered that the urges both come from the same place: the desire to escape suffering (in my case, from work related stress) by substituting it with pleasure.  The sad part is that motivation ruins whatever real pleasure could be had by either alcohol or sex.  For my part, I've decided I can't drink alcohol at all: I've developed a late life intolerance to it, which causes me to get drunk easily, plus it exacerbates my acid-reflux, which is a potential dangerous disease.  Sex, though, should be something I enjoy with my spouse, and porn desensitizes me to that experience and diverts all my sexual energy and desire to an unhelpful activity.  So, my "reboot," as for many others here, isn't just about quitting porn but re-starting healthy sexual relations.  All in good time, though.  This is just Day 8.

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I can relate. I have decided to give up alcohol as well, as I have never been able to drink in moderation and have always used it as an escape. I don't get drunk easily, but in a way that's worse, because it you can do all sorts of damage even if you didn't feel too inebriated at the time. I've experienced hangovers following nights when I probably could have passed a sobriety test at any given point.

I used to be able to drink like that, too, dlansky.  I agree it can be very damaging and deceptively so.  No that I've lost my tolerance I don't have to worry about that happening.  Even if I drink in moderation I get drunk and I have learned to enjoy my alert state of mind so much that drunkenness, which used to feel good, actually feels bad.  I think I similar thing will happen with porn when I embrace it's opposite, which for me is really connection and intimacy (particularly sexual, but not only).

Day 9.

I have undergone one of the most stressful work weeks of my life but I have not reverted to my old habits. It is definitely due to my ability to allow myself to feel the urges ? neither resisting nor giving in to them ? and to simply wait until they subside.  The urge to have a drink after work is especially powerful. Urge for PMO is almost always in the morning.  No PMO in the morning is starting to result in morning wood.  A bit of a surprise there since I wasn't expecting that until later.

Congrats!  You are navigating through the eye of the storm.  Keep it up! 

Day 11.

Thanks, UC Light. The hurricane swirls around me, but remain in the calm eye of the storm.

As I continue to abstain from alcohol and porn through mindfulness meditation, I notice that other, lesser habits then become visible to me: checking my phone, nervous eating.  These are also intoxicants in the sense that they take you away from the real moment you're in and yourself. When examined closely they are an effort to escape dissatisfaction with the present moment by substituting pleasure, a little hit of dopamine to take away some aversion to present conditions. All habits are alike in this way.

I feel like the mindfulness I have developed is chewing through my bad habits like a buzzsaw through a tree, starting with the biggest, most visible layers on the outside (porn and alcohol), then proceeding into each smaller, concentric ring of bad habits. What's amazing is that I'm not using willpower at all. I'm just noticing the urges, not identifying with them or their associated chatter (they are not me), and neither giving in to them nor pushing them away.  They just pass, like everything else.

There are parallel effects in other areas of my life.  For instance, in the evenings I'm often extremely fatigued from my day and feel too tired to write in my journal or meditate.  If I say to myself, "I'm tired," then I won't write or meditate because I've identified myself as "Tired Me," and Tired Me cannot write or meditate.  But if I say to myself, "Tiredness is happening," I am aware of the fatigue but know it is not me, and that I can decide to write and meditate anyway and simply notice what it is like to write and meditate when tiredness is happening.  Uncomfortable experiences, like experiencing cravings, can't control you if you recognize that they aren't you.

Tiredness is actually something I need to be aware of to control my porn and alcohol habits, because it was often in moments of tiredness that I have made bad judgments and relapsed.  Tired Me can have a drink or indulge in PMO; my aware self, which notices tiredness happening, doesn't react by drinking or indulging in PMO.  This is very powerful.

Day 13

Yesterday I had two very similar experiences.  I was online and navigated to a workout site I subscribe to, and saw a trigger there.  It filled me with urges, but I also felt more strongly a recognition that the website was depicting people in stereotypical, objectified terms which, despite the attractiveness of the trigger, was unattractive to me.  I felt like saying, "How dare you think you can push my buttons in this way!"  I was seeing things clearly.

The second experience was when I opened up a browser on my phone that I hadn't used in quite a while and was surprised to find a porn-ish site that I had perused long ago still present in the browser.  My instant reaction was, "Wow, how useless and sad it is that the past me would indulge in such things, and on a phone, no less."  It really felt like a blast from the distant past, not a part of my present or future life.

I also realized yesterday that to make better progress towards resuming a completely healthy, intimate relationship with my wife, I'm going to have to give up masturbation for this reboot.  Not everyone's choice or option, I know, but for me, in my situation, it's the right way.  I'll be able to fully re-direct my libido towards my marriage.

 

Inner_Light said:

Day 11.

Thanks, UC Light. The hurricane swirls around me, but remain in the calm eye of the storm.

As I continue to abstain from alcohol and porn through mindfulness meditation, I notice that other, lesser habits then become visible to me: checking my phone, nervous eating.  These are also intoxicants in the sense that they take you away from the real moment you're in and yourself. When examined closely they are an effort to escape dissatisfaction with the present moment by substituting pleasure, a little hit of dopamine to take away some aversion to present conditions. All habits are alike in this way.

I feel like the mindfulness I have developed is chewing through my bad habits like a buzzsaw through a tree, starting with the biggest, most visible layers on the outside (porn and alcohol), then proceeding into each smaller, concentric ring of bad habits. What's amazing is that I'm not using willpower at all. I'm just noticing the urges, not identifying with them or their associated chatter (they are not me), and neither giving in to them nor pushing them away.  They just pass, like everything else.

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So much wisdom here.  I do the same thing with my phone and eating.  We contrive so many distractions to elude the now.  Day by day...

Day 15 and going strong.  I'm doing meditations now to dewire my anxiety loops from work situations, and it's working well.  If anyone is interested, Google "Unwinding Anxiety."  Great course via an app, but not free...

Day 17.  Urges for both porn and alcohol have faded to near nothing, though of course they might always return.  I'm ready either way. While I am no longer indulging in my bad habits, I am still struggling, but making progress, in dealing with the stress that they were a reaction to.

I notice that I am most peaceful in times when I can concentrate on a task that takes some creativity, or that is full of pure enjoyment, like writing or running (for me).  Part of dealing with the root cause of my bad habits is adjusting my mental attitude and developing mindfulness, but part of it is also changing some of the conditions of my life that are likely to produce unhappiness, no matter how favorable my mental attitude and mindfulness.  Having the right mental attitude and mindfulness produces the wisdom to know when actual conditions in the world can and should be changed.  At some point, I know, I need to change my work situation if I'm going to be really happy.  But at least for now it isn't driving me to drink and PMO.

Happy to hear that you are feeling a respite from these urges.  Enjoy this time, but remain vigilant.

The corporate culture in NY is famously demanding.  I moved south 17 years ago for a slower pace of life with my family and don't regret it.

Thanks, UC Light.  Indeed, I see I have to remain vigilant, and I'm learning ways of doing that that go beyond will power: acquiring awareness and wisdom.

Day 19.  Near miss yesterday, again the result of reacting to stress triggers related to work.  What I'm trying to do in these situations is something I'm learning through a course I'm taking on applying mindfulness techniques to anxiety: consider what the outcomes are of the behavior I'm tempted to indulge in actually are, and whether these outcomes are health and happiness, or not.  The course teaches that one must attain a state of "disenchantment" with the behaviors that actually helps to re-wire the brain (the teacher is a neuro scientist).  The idea is that the brain learns that there is not a real reward to the behavior, and the habit loop then weakens. 

I am glad to hear you are keeping it up.  You are almost to 3 weeks!

You are right that the key is wisdom and not willpower, not to gainsay the importance of willpower on this path.  Through cognitive-behavioral techniques like the ones that you are using that work by altering mostly unconscious dysfunctional thinking, you can enhance feelings that support your recovery.  Change how you think, and you will change how you feel.

The longer your brain has been rewarded for certain behaviors, the harder it is to unlearn those behaviors though.  It's a long haul.  Mindfulness rewires reward centers as well.  You experience the urge without the reward.  Eventually your brain begins to deprioritize those urges.

Keep up the fight.  You are walking the tightrope.

Thanks, UC Light, and good wishes to you!

Day 22

The course I'm taking on "Unwinding Anxiety" is completely changing my life.  I'm learning to enjoy the game of "surfing" my urges as a reaction to feelings of anxiety.  This reboot feels different that unsuccessful attempts in the past in that it is joyful, even fun.  I'm approaching it with a relaxed but confident attitude.  No more grim bursts of willpower, or beating myself up for having thoughts and urges about porn. 

Day 25

All the negative emotions and bad habits I indulge in come from a perception that there is a void that must be filled. But there is no such void ? it?s just a bundle of thoughts and emotions that pass. I am learning to live in the present joyfully, even while experiencing stress and urges to indulge in former habits.